Homemade Cranberry Liqueur (Anderson: long form) Recipe

Following is a complete how-to for my favorite recipe, Cranberry Liqueur.
It covers in detail a number of issues which are taken for granted in other
recipes here. It's probably a good introduction to read through before
starting one of your own.

A note before diving in: cranberry was the first flavor I had real success
with, so it's the oldest recipe in my collection. As a result, it's seen
more tinkering than most of the other recipes. The first major change I
introduced was the addition of cinnamon and allspice, for that festive,
"holiday" flavor. It's proven quite popular, so now I produce
two varieties. More recently, I took to heart some complaints I'd been
getting about sweetness. The original Meilach and Meilach recipe simply
called for "1 1/2 cups of sugar syrup," and elsewhere in the
book defined the recipe for sugar syrup: 2 units of sugar boiled in 1 unit
of water yields 2 units of syrup. In reality, it yields about 10% too much.
So I was left with the decision of how to interpret the instructions, and
originally I simply obeyed the declared proportions for syrup, getting
a little less than 1 3/4 cups of syrup. However, I decided to try it with
using exactly 1 1/2 cups of syrup. The results have been overwhelmingly
positive, even among the people who liked it well enough before. And along
the way, I figured I'd see how it worked with lime peel instead of lemon
peel. Also a win.

1Fresh or frozen, but don't try it with sauce. Well, it might
work with cranberry sauce, but I have no idea how to compensate for the
jelly and extra sweetening.

2I use Arc jars, with metal bands
and a latch-like deal which secure the glass lid to the glass body, with
a rubber ring providing the seal. The mixture is a little larger than one
liter, so make sure you have enough room if you don't get metric sizes.

First, clean the heck out of your jar. Any faint lingering smell will
become a taste in your liqueur, and since many new jars smell like latex
at first, you'll really want to make sure they're clean. Boiling water
can be effective, but make sure you've warmed up your jar with merely hot
water first, or it'll shatter. And if you use the rubber rings like I do,
clean them as well. You can't spend enough time cleaning.

Chop up the cranberries in a blender or food processor, on the lowest
setting, until it's the consistency of grits (Maypo, for you Northerners).
We recently bought a Cuisinart Classic,
and it made the chopping process a breeze. Make sure they're all chopped
up; any berry still whole won't contribute to the liqueur. Pour into jar.
Using the apple peeler, carefully peel just the rind (leaving the white
pith behind) from your 1/2 lemon/line and 1/4 orange, and put the peels
in the jar. Pour vodka in the jar. If you're using the optional spices,
add them to the mix as well. Boil sugar and water together; when the sugar
is all dissolved, let stand a minute and then measure 1 1/2 cups into the
jar. Seal the jar quickly, lest the alcohol evaporate in the heat. Let
the mixture steep for 4 weeks, shaking lightly each day. Store in a dark
place.

Note: When I was working with the blender, I found that it was slightly
easier if I poured most of the chopped cranberries into the steeping container,
and then washed out the remaining bits from the blender jar using the vodka.

After steeping, take the jar out and line your big funnel with your
cheese cloth. Put some other jar-like thing underneath the funnel, or you
will pour your mixture all over your tabletop, which is not recommended
(I have tried it myself). Pour mixture through cheese cloth. Gather up
the corners of the cloth, and squeeze the solid material remaining of all
the liquid your strength can muster (if you're using a cinnamon stick,
remove it before squeezing). Filter again through this funnel, lined with
a coffee filter or paper towel, to get all the lingering solids out. Paper
towels are more porous and let larger particles through, but it goes an
awful lot faster. Solids remaining aren't too much of a problem; they'll
leave yellow rings around the inside of your bottle after a month or two,
but they don't affect the taste that I've noticed. Occasionally, you might
also see some extra cloudiness at the bottom of your bottles after a few
weeks. Shake moderately before serving to redistribute the material.

Before bottling, clean the heck out of your bottles, too, for precisely
the same reasons you cleaned your jar. Pretty bottles
aren't necessary, but they do tend to make your audience more disposed
to liking the contents. Pour the liquid into your bottle, cork, and you're
done. Aging a month may help mellow it a little, but drinking immediately
is still quite good. Notably, one friend of mine who had kept a bottle
for an entire year said it had matured fabulously. The optional spices
have gotten rave reviews from all but a few of my tasters, who thought
the original was still the best. The spices definitely impart a winter-holiday
feel to the drink. I have also been told that allowing the liqueur
to breathe before serving greatly improves the taste. That is, open the
bottle and let it stand open to the air for up to a half hour before serving.
This does cut down on the lifetime of the bottle, of course, but it tends
to get the bottles emptied sooner rather than later. And finally, lime
does seem more popular than lemon. The lime peel imparts a stronger and
more recognizable taste, which people enjoy. I have yet to use lime
peel with the spices, though.

Yield: about 4 cups

This stuff will last at least a year if unopened (none of mine have
remained unopened for more than a year), exactly one year if opened seldomly
and resealed, and a few months if opened often. If you're unsure, just
make sure it all gets drunk at the first opening. Works for me.

One other issue: corking. Corks are porous, and will allow your alcohol
to slowly evaporate, and contribute to the decay of your liqueur over time.
I'm looking into sealing the bottles with paraffin after corking them to
try and combat this problem. But don't be fooled into thinking that corks
can preserve your liqueurs indefinitely. Well, perhaps wine-quality corks
pressed with a mechanical corker into standard wine bottles will do all
right, but remember to leave your liqueur bottles on their sides.

Questions/clarifications? Hey, I have no life either. Write me here,
I'm always on.